


the creature and the thief

by zhuzhubi



Series: the fall and the climb [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Lots of Angst, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison Arc, Reid Whump, Reid gets a little unsub-y at parts but he's still a good boy, Spoilers, but its canon whump, not condoning violence tho, post-prison Reid, through 13.1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25130224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi
Summary: Cat Adams is a beast with over a hundred victims, and what if your Mom becomes one of them? Scratch is a burglar - his gem: the stolen lives of people tricked into killing for him.(Or maybe you’re the creature and life is the thief - because you feel like an animal, and all life does is take take take.)
Series: the fall and the climb [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819264
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26





	the creature and the thief

**Author's Note:**

> also on tumblr at zhuzhubii, if you prefer

It’s Cat Adams _Cat Adams_ , and she wants to talk to you in person, now, or your mother dies. You have to go, to play her game again, and you are so not ready -

_A few hours ago you forgot the doors out here aren’t locked, you don’t have to wait for them to buzz open, you’re still back there in your mind and you’re just supposed to step back into being a profiler?_

_can I do this can I do this I don’t think I can do this_

\- But you have to. You need to be strong for your mother like you always are and always have been. Her _guardian and caretaker_.

You steel yourself, like you always do. Pretend to be strong. Walk into the interrogation room -

_its Cat its her its her oh god_

\- like it belongs to you. The gray concrete and metal bars are familiar to you now in a way they never were before, and you know it’s exactly what that woman - _that bitch_ \- wants. 

_Let’s play_ , you think.

…

You realize quickly that the baby is not yours; that’s not the part that bothers you. 

It’s the _touching_ and that you know it really happened, that’s what’s getting to you. All these months, you thought it was another one of those fantasies you sometimes have -

_It’s not the sexual component that bothers you, nor that they feature both women and men. You’re not ashamed of thinking about sex - you’re only human, after all, and not the chaste creature your coworkers half-believe you to be. You’ve had sex before. You masturbate when you feel so inclined._

_It’s that you sometimes think about_ Maeve _in that way, in the way that wasn’t shameful before she was gone. After she passed on, those thoughts continued to come, about her skin and how soft it would be, about kissing her and how it would feel to have her under you, how she would sound when-_

_What kind of a man are you to think about a dead woman that way?_

\- and not a memory of - _of that._ You know, intellectually, that it wasn’t your fault, that you were out of your mind on drugs - 

_She took your sobriety and touched your most intimate parts. And you let her you let her you let her_

\- but it feels like a betrayal of Maeve’s memory. It feels like you should have known it was fake, like your body should have refused to react to Lindsey’s touch despite the liquid pleasure in your bloodstream and nerve endings evolved to appreciate the friction.

You don’t remember if you finished or not - 

_I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know_

\- and you can only hope you didn’t ( _but you know it would have been so_ terrifyingly easy _when you were high_ ). That wasn’t the part that mattered. Cat didn’t actually need the sample, she just wanted to hurt you. And she knew - _knows_ \- that psychological pain, like the knowledge of being violated ( _or, if you didn’t end up remembering, the knowledge that you would never truly know if it happened or not_ ), would hurt most of all.

…

When you hear the explosion over the phone your mind turns off. You scream at Cat and she screams back and she taunts you and you _know_ that violence is what she wants from you. You _know_ , but you can’t stop yourself.

You are slamming the table to the side, wrapping your hands around her tiny, vulnerable neck -

_They are so big and she is so small. She is weak, I am stronger than her she deserves this deserves to feel as breathless and crushed as I do_

\- and pressing her into the wall, squeezing tighter and tighter, crushing her windpipe under your palms so that she cannot catch her breath, craving the feeling of her hyoid snapping -

_I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her, she deserves to die. How dare she kill my mother how dare she rape me and have me thrown in prison as if I am no better than her, she is an animal that needs to be put down this is necessary_

\- and JJ is pulling at your shoulders, begging you to stop.

_Spence, she’s pregnant, let go! She’s pregnant!_

And you let her pull you away -

_you know this because with your anger and the adrenaline, JJ couldn’t have stopped you if you hadn’t let her. But you also know you wouldn’t have let go if JJ wasn’t there_

\- and you look at Cat in horror, and JJ looks at _you_ in horror, and Cat looks so _satisfied_ , so _proud of herself_ for getting you to do that. And, unable to face it, you turn tail and flee like a dog. Bury your head in your hands and think about how you always identify too much with the unsubs, always felt that maybe one more misfortune in your life would have turned you into one of them and maybe this is that thing, the final straw, the stressor -

_You couldn’t let Owen die because he was just a kid, because he was just like you. And your teammates think it’s just because you were bullied - ridiculed, tortured really - like he was. That’s not the full truth._

_There were moments where you wanted them to suffer, truly suffer. You fantasized about stealing from the chemistry classroom and slipping something into their food, watching with bated breath as they ate and then it burned through their stomachs, an agonizing death. About getting the quarterback alone and chloroforming him, stripping him, then tying him up to the goalpost and leaving him for dead like they did to you - you think sometimes about what might have happened if you hadn’t eventually freed yourself (it was the Friday afternoon right before spring break no one would have come until over a week later oh god, would you have died? Would your mom have noticed you were missing by then?)._

_You always felt ashamed of those thoughts, and maybe that’s what makes you different (plenty of unsubs feel remorse. What about that, genius?)._

_You never acted on them. Maybe that’s all that separates you from those you chase._

\- JJ sits next to you and she forgives you. You tell her she shouldn’t, but she does anyway. _You were in an impossible situation_ , she tells you, _this is not who you are now no matter how much it feels that way_. You have a moment to think about how much JJ must care about you to put aside everything you’ve done before the two of you figure out the puzzle, and there is no more time for introspection.

You win, not Cat. You tell her _watch me_ -

_What makes me different from you is that I am ashamed. I am ashamed of hurting those men. I am ashamed of hurting you despite the pain you inflicted upon me, despite your plot to kill my mother. I do not relish in the pain of others like you do. I admit that I have inflicted it, and I will forever be trying to repent_

\- but it still feels like she won. You can’t take back what you’ve done, and you feel jaded in a way you never have before. When they bullied you, you knew it would end one day, and that you’d likely have more success in life than they would. When your father left you got degree after degree to stick it to him, and somewhere along the way you started to feel like you could use your knowledge to better the world, whatever that means. 

Even when Hankel took you, you felt grateful that it wasn’t JJ, that she was mostly alright. You’d been through something awful and you were in pain, kept yourself doped up to drive it away, but it still felt like a small blessing that it was you and not her. 

Before this, you always retained an almost child-like optimism and intrigue with the world. You hope you can get that back, but right now it feels like the unsubs always win - even when you catch them.

…

You are _so relieved_ to see your mom.

…

You’ve only just gotten home and settled Mom with the new night nurse - 

_it’s time to look into memory care homes in the DC area, however much you don’t want to. Because it reminds you of the last time you had to do this (didn’t “have to”, you chastise yourself, there was no “have to” there was just doing and selfishness) and_ Mom, I called them here _and_ Mom, I’m sorry I’m so sorry, _but how sorry could you have been? - you did it anyway. You sent her away, and now you’re sending her away again and she’ll never forgive you_

\- when you get called back in. You were looking forward to just resting for a bit -

_I’m so tired why can’t I just rest for once. Be selfish for once and pretend I never got the call, go to sleep and wake up and pretend I’m normal_

\- or at least trying to, you can already feel the post-traumatic stress closing in on you despite how much you try to deny it, but the whole team has gone dark - 

_You could never ignore your friends completely. Shut them out to protect them from you maybe, in truth you’ve done that a few times. But if they need you, you will go to them without question. Love is like that._

\- There was a car accident -

_If that’s what we’re gonna call a deliberate attack with a semi, okay I guess. To each their own_

\- They think _they know_ it was Scratch. Walker’s dead. Emily’s missing. Half the team is out of commission. You haven’t been reinstated, but this is an emergency. This is the man who tore your family apart -

_he stole Hotch_

\- You’re not gonna let him get away with it. You barely knew Walker because you were away. Losing him hurts, but it’s bearable. You cannot handle losing Emily right now -

_She took a beating for you, all those years ago._

_Telling the Believers she was the federal agent was the right choice strategically - they were more likely to trust you over her - but you know that’s not why she did it._

_She did it to protect you. Because she could not bear to see you hurt. Because at that moment, when they asked who it was, you froze and didn’t know what to do._

_Emily is so strong. And even when she died and came back - and you were angry at her for letting you grieve needlessly - you loved her no less._

_Doing this job, facing these dangers every day, it brings you so close to your teammates. You know all too well the fear that comes with them being in danger, and the pain in your chest that comes from losing them. The only word to describe how you feel for them is “family” - familial love - but even that is insufficient. They feel like extensions of yourself, and every time one of them moves on, to death or to greener pastures, it is like losing a limb. How can you describe that feeling? You can’t, you can’t_

\- you just can’t. It will break you. So you pull it together, and you work the case -

_Tell Jack I need him to work the case_

\- you need to figure out what B-CAP is but your head is spinning and your vision is tunneling and you feel like you are locked in -

_You see Hotch - the man who embodies stoic and put together - sobbing over Haley’s body and though Foyet is taken care of, there is only sorrow. And you know Hotch, too, must be thinking of how close you all were to getting there in time_

\- Emily does not have time. Scratch will only find tormenting her fun for so long. The hour it takes you to figure it out - _Banisteriopsis caapi_ \- is fifty-nine minutes too long, so you hurl a book at a window in frustration and it worries your friends, but you only care about finding Emily -

_You’re afraid your brain isn’t good enough anymore, that the cogs which once turned so smoothly rusted over as you rotted in prison. And you feel rotten. Like the yogurt in the back of the fridge that Mom doesn’t like and was close to expiring before all this - it is surely still there, even after all these months - and does nothing but sit and fester and begin to smell_

\- You want Scratch to die. You want -

_Front sight. Trigger press. Follow through._

_Hotch taught you that. Scratch took Hotch away. Scratch needs to pay_

\- to be the one who puts a bullet in his brain. You warn Luke of what will happen if it’s you who finds him first. He notices you pawing at your eyes -

_It’s like you can’t focus your vision. Everything is cloudy and off kilter - if you can just get the dirt out clarity will return. There’s just some dirt in your eyes_

\- and says _you know what this is_. You do, of course you do, you’ve felt like this before. But last time you buried it by chasing highs and you want to do it this time too but you _can’t you can’t you couldn’t do that_ to your family again -

 _You can tell they’re worried. That they’re afraid for you, of an accidental overdose, of a tainted supply. Maybe not all of them - you’re still not sure if they’ve all figured it out or not, Hotch certainly has, and Emily too, at the very least - but even those that don’t know are afraid you might do something rash. Something_ on purpose _._

_You’re still not ready, though, to give it up. The highs are too sweet and the nightmares too sour and too real and too draining. You’re not ready to let go of your crutch just yet_

\- couldn’t make excuses not to deal with your feelings like that again. It hurt them too much, the last time. And as much as it’s painful to work through, you’d rather hurt than hurt them -

_Yelled at Emily again today. Made it 12 hours before I gave in. Hands are shaking all the time now_

\- and as muddled as your thoughts are now, a high would only make it worse. And Emily needs you to be as clear-headed as you can be. You solved the puzzle and you’re going to get her back now -

_See? You solved it without taking a hit. I know how bad you want it, how much you’re itching to go out and find some once this is over, but this is proof that you don’t need it you don’t need it you don’t need it_

\- In the end, Emily is alright and Scratch is dead. Luke let him fall.

He made the right choice.


End file.
